And not a good one. Here’s the transcript of an interview with Dr. Michael Hudson about the centuries long decline of the West. I highly recommend the whole thing.

Dr. Hudson: Well, Protestantism was created by the financial interests. Here was the problem that bankers had. If they lent money to the Catholic kings, the Catholic kings were so oppressive that they kept going bankrupt. They couldn’t raise the money to pay for the wars, and they kept defaulting. And what the banks wanted was the modern national state. They wanted states that had a parliament that, instead of opposing debts, as they did under the kings, parliaments would be willing to borrow money to wage wars to defend themselves against the Catholics who were attacking them, by pledging all of the revenue of the whole population. And the modern states, as the power to tax and pledge public debts, were essentially created with constitutions to satisfy the banking interests, enough to be able to raise credit. And the modern states, ever since the Protestant Reformation, have become basically agents of the international financial class.

As there is no new column here this week, I thought the foregoing would be a good substitute. If you want to read me on something, then just type your pet subject into the search bar. Odds are that somewhere over the past 12 years I’ve covered it.